Quotes

Plays succeed or fail as films because they are a play that should or shouldn't be a film. With the very confined Talk Radio (1988) people felt, how can you make a movie about a guy in a radio station? I thought there was plenty to see. Our cast was mostly theater people, and they were comfortable at that level of reality that got established when Oliver Stone and I made the film. You have to really decide as a playwright going into a film production, what is that level of reality going to be? Consistency of style is important.

[on the documentary Intent to Destroy: Death, Denial & Depiction (2017)] I've seen a few films that cover the Armenian Genocide, in terms of giving the information, and I really think this is the most deft one I have seen. Nothing against the others, some of which were done by friends of mine - and I really think they're wonderful - but in terms of the evolution of trying to give so much information to the viewer in a quick amount of time, this movie really does a terrific job. There's a lot to understand here - it's World War I, the Ottoman Empire is 600 years old, so this isn't stuff that just happens overnight. I think Joe [Joe Berlinger] did a great job on it. [2017]

[on The Promise (2016)] It's a great movie and it's certainly gotten a lot of attention. If they want to talk about box office and talk about the movie more - good. Because every time we talk about the movie, we talk about what happened. At the end of the day, the story that Turkey has been selling for a long time now is that there's some sort of debate [about the Armenian Genocide] as to whether or not this happened. So the more we can get the information out that there's no debate, then that's a success... and this movie does that. [2017]